Paradise Burning (9 page)

But not this kind of sarcasm. The Mandy of
old hadn’t had a cynical bone in her body. Until she met Peter
Pennington. Until he’d tossed away everything AKA had done for him.
Including a young, sensitive, gifted wife. Not that he hadn’t tried
to take Mandy with him. He’d been Eleanor Kinglsey’S fair-haired
boy, the stud hand-picked to carry on the line. But when he’d
wanted to take Mandy away, Eleanor had turned vicious. Had she been
protecting her baby or AKA’s most talented technoferret? For
whatever reason, the CEO of Armitage, Kingsley & Associates had
had enough vitriol to spew out over the whole organization. Peter
left. Mandy stayed. And developed a tongue all too much like her
mother’s.

“
I pre-ordered lunch,” Peter finally
responded. “When the girls are all here, we call downstairs, and
that’s it.”

“
Fine.” With an exaggerated sigh of
relief Mandy sank down onto a sofa covered in a sea of flowers so
brilliant they almost hurt her eyes. “Tell me, am I merely a
chaperon, or do I get to ask questions?”

“
Be my guest.” Peter gave a negligent
wave of his hand. “If you want to expand your horizons, learn a new
trade, that’s okay by me.”

“
Shoes pinching a bit this morning?”
Mandy inquired sweetly.

“
Damn it, Mouse! I wish I had one of
those
chadors
so you’d have to
hold it in your teeth. If this is the new you, let me tell you I
don’t find it attractive . . .”

Peter broke off as the doorbell sounded,
hastening across the room to buzz the visitor in. Mandy debated
whether or not she should stand up to greet their guest, opted for
slinking farther down into the bower of flowers. Curiosity,
however, sparked in her gold-flecked green eyes, overlaid with a
lingering glint of belligerence. She’d been reading real life
hooker stories, courtesy of the local library. The idea of Peter
and hookers did not sit well at any time, but after what she’d read
. . .

Mandy’s spark of hostility faded into
oblivion as she took in the vision in the doorway. Dejection
swallowed her whole. Not all the pizzazz of her new wardrobe, not
all the cosmetics in the world, would ever make her look remotely
like the gorgeous creature whose confident professional poise
flashed into dazzling come-on mode as soon as Peter opened the
door.

Escort Service, Mandy assessed, trying not to
wince. This was the kind of girl demanded by men of discriminating
taste. And whether businessmen, tourists, or retirees, the citizens
of Manatee Bay tended to have standards as high as their pockets
were deep. If it was possible to sink any farther into the sofa’s
comfortable pillows, Mandy would have done it.

The young woman—probably in her late
twenties—was tall, though not as awkwardly tall as herself, Mandy
judged. Perfectly layered blond hair fell below her shoulders,
dangling artistically over a turquoise linen dress short enough to
reveal shapely legs that seemed to go on forever. Her makeup was
flawless, her purse small and tasteful. So small, Mandy thought
sourly, if the girl had sense enough to carry condoms, she must
have taken them out of the box.

“
I’m Jade,” the young woman pronounced.
Suddenly, her eyes moved past Peter to Mandy. Her smile
disappeared. There was no doubt Jade had spotted a menace. “I don’t
do threesomes,” she announced, her lush voice hardening into steel.
“And if you get your kicks from watching girl on girl, you can
forget it. I don’t do kinky.”

Mandy came off the sofa in one swift move,
cutting off Peter’s attempt to explain. Every jot of her stern
professional training was drowned in shock, distaste, and a hot
wave of pure female jealousy. “That’s sick!” she spit out, fists
clenched. “How dare you imply . . .?”

”
Man-dy!” Peter groaned.

She never took her eyes off Jade who was just
standing there, poised, glamorous, sexy as hell, and, worse yet,
now faintly amused. Mandy ground her teeth. Trust Peter to find a
bimbo, however superior.

“
Now look, ladies . . .” Peter
cajoled.

“
Miss Missionary Hooker,” Mandy mocked.
“Sorry, but I wasn’t born yesterday. Men don’t pay for what they
can get for free. They go to hookers for what they can’t get at
home. Stick to straight sex and you starve.”

Since Jade was wearing four-inch heels,
she managed to look down on the tall, thin girl with the high
society clothes and old money face.
Who did
the bitch think she was?
“I can, and I do,” she
asserted, standing her ground against what she now saw was the
thing she most despised—a woman born to wealth and privilege. A
woman who’d been given it all without having to soil so much as her
little pinkie. Hell, she bet the silly bitch was giving it away to
Mr. Gorgeous. If he liked ‘em lean and lanky.

Jade’s pale blond hair flew in an arc
as she tossed her head. “Men like uncomplicated, girl. No
courtship, no obligation. I do straight sex two afternoons a week,
That’s all I do, and I make more than any of my frumpy little
neighbors with their you-have-to-wear-a-slip-to-work nine-to-five
jobs.” A smirk crossed Jade’s classically beautiful face as she
added the
coup de grâce
: “And
I don’t do drugs. I’m saving for my kids’ college
education.”

Mandy actually felt the rigid lines of
fury in her face dissolving as her quivering balloon of righteous
indignation deflated. Every instinct screamed that Jade was telling
the truth. Mandy had to face the fact that Jade was beautiful
enough men would pay just to be
seen
with her.

But if Jade had children, there was probably
a husband. Did he know about his wife’s afternoons as a high-priced
callgirl? Mandy tucked the question away for later.

“
This really is just lunch and an
interview, Jade,” Peter was saying to the accompaniment of his
book-signing smile. “And, as I promised, at twice your going rate.
No one goes into the bedroom unless you have to powder your
nose.”

“
Honey,” Jade drawled, giving Peter’s
cheek a little pat before seating herself on the sofa as far from
Mandy as possible, “not even straight sex has to be done in
bed.”

Once again, the doorbell rang. Mandy felt
Peter’s palpable relief, which matched her own.

Jade shot to her feet as the new arrival
entered the room.

“
I don’t do anything—not talking,
eating or fucking—in the same room with some ho off the streets,”
she declared.

The newcomer—no more than sixteen or
seventeen, Mandy guessed—struck a pose, slender dark hands
silhouetted against lime green spandex that hugged her hips and
stopped just south of the arrest line. A cloud of black billowed
about a round face slashed with eyeshadow that was too light and
lipstick that was too bright. Shapely legs shone deep chocolate
between the lime green ultra-mini and an elaborate pair of
sparkling white patent leather boots. Mandy realized, with sudden
insight, that the girl had made a special effort to dress for the
occasion.

The teenager eyed Jade from the tips of her
turquoise pumps to the shining crown of her sun-kissed blond hair.
“Well, sugar, you kin jus’ kiss my black ass,” she drawled,
emphasizing her retort with a sinuous swagger that ended with one
lime green hip cocked defiantly in the older girl’s direction.

For a moment Peter’s professional aplomb
wavered. “Uh–ladies,” he said brightly, “how about some wine and
cheese?”

While the women—all three of them—were still
gaping at the absurdity of wine and cheese in this particular
situation, Peter eased Jade back onto the sofa and seated the
newcomer in an easy chair across from Mandy. Hoping there would be
no outbreaks of violence, he bravely turned his back and headed
toward the dining table. When he whisked the napkin off the cheese,
Peter eyed the small cheese knife with some misgiving. Its edges
were not as rounded as he could have wished. He did an interference
run into the dense quiet resonating among the three women, placing
the cheeseboard on the coffee table in front of the sofa, praying
the girls would sample the cheese and not each other.

“
Chardon . . . uh, white wine or
ah–pink?” he inquired, smiling down at the young black girl who was
sitting as primly on the edge of the overstuffed chair as if she
were at a royal tea party.

“
Whatever,” she said with a grand wave
of her hand. “I ain’t never had no kind but red.”

Odd that he hadn’t recognized her when he
opened the door, Peter thought. He had a good memory for faces. But
the hooker he had stopped while cruising the more notorious streets
of Manatee Bay last week had been wearing faded blue jeans and a
scruffy T-shirt. Her hair had been done up in those tiny braids
and, as far as he could recall, she hadn’t been wearing any makeup
at all. Actually . . . he couldn’t even be sure it was the same
girl. When she’d leaned in his car window, asking if he wanted a
date, Peter had explained that all he wanted was to talk and handed
her a card on which he’d written the address of the apartment, the
date and time. He’d also added a fifty dollar bill, promising two
hundred more if she showed up.

It had to be the same girl. She had simply
made an heroic effort to give him his money’s worth. Not for the
first time, Peter’s stomach churned. He was using other people’s
misery for his own gain. In the end, if he got it right, what he
wrote in his book might help, but girls like this were already
lost. She’d be dead of drugs, or AIDS, a violent john, or an overly
greedy pimp before she was old enough to have a legal drink.

“
Delilah?” he asked as he handed her a
glass of white zinfandel. “Isn’t that what you said your name
was?”

Peter was offering the quirky, vulnerable
smile that always gave Mandy goosebumps. Offering it to a teenage
streetwalker.

Mentally, she took a step back, looked at
herself, and her lips turned down. How unprofessional could she
get? Yet how absolutely astonishing that these two creatures of the
cultural underworld could, with one flip of the hip, turn her into
a jealous shrew.

“
Yeah, Delilah’s my street name.
Y’know,” the black girl added, casting an appreciative eye over
Peter, “you must be really hot if you gonna do us all.”

Peter swallowed a cracker the wrong
way, coughing until Mandy gave him a hearty, very hearty, slap on
the back. “I thought I explained,” he sputtered at last. “I told
you when I spoke to you, and I wrote it in the note I gave you. I
only want to
talk
. Ms.
Armitage is my assistant. We’re working on a book. We’re going to
have lunch and talk. And, believe me, that’s all we’re going to
do.”

Mandy noticed that even though Jade still had
her nose in the air, her ears were standing at full attention.

“
Well, you couldn’t prove it by me,”
Delilah said. “I was flyin’ the other night and, besides, I can’t
read worth shit. The letters sort of dance around on the page,
y’know. Couldn’t learn nothin’ no how. That’s how I took to the
streets. Wasn’t much else I c’d do. About all I kin read is the
numbers on cash money. And, a’course the pictures help. Y’know—all
them dead presidents.”

Delilah crunched the remainder of her cheese
and cracker, washed it down with a deliberately dainty sip of wine.
“Anybody gives me a fifty for doing nuthin’, I figure I kin find
somebody to read what he wrote. So I did, and I’m here,” she
concluded with apparent satisfaction.

“
Unless you give change, girl,” Jade
declared, “you never saw anything higher than Jackson in your life.
You wouldn’t recognize Grant or Ben Franklin if they bit
you.”

“
You butch bitch!” Delilah screeched
just before Peter clamped his hand hard against her
shoulder.

When the doorbell rang for the third time,
Mandy dashed for the buzzer, wondering what fuel was about to be
added to the already crackling situation.

Karim walked, slept, walked again, his long
strides crunching sand and shell beneath his feet, the suffocating
Florida jungle closing in around him. Nothing assuaged the miasma
of the nights. His body burned even as his stomach sickened. He was
not meant for this. Those who shook their heads, wisely pronouncing
life capricious and cruel, were painfully correct. There was only
one way to ease his tortured soul.

Nadya
. He found
her walking down the dim hallway, juggling one of those simple
conveniences Americans took so casually, a large plastic laundry
basket. A delicate, fragile creature, his Nadya. The top of her
head, with startled blue eyes peering warily up at him, came only
to his shoulder.

It was so simple, so amusing, to place
his hands over hers, to watch her eyes open even wider. Like a
surreal waltz for three, they began to turn. The man, the woman,
and the laundry basket in the narrow confines of the hallway. The
plastic sagged, dented in, as Karim edged closer, his gaze locking
on hers. Abruptly, he stopped, removed his hands, holding them out
to his sides.
See, I’m not pushing you. Go
on, run, silly girl. I won’t hurt you.

But, of course, she wouldn’t. Where could she
run?

He stepped forward, forcing her backwards
down the hall, still holding the basket before her. Her eyes were
huge. Full of anger, not terror. Too bad. Today he needed terror.
Control. He needed to be a man.

She was determined to be defiant, he saw, as
she backed straight past the door to his room. He kicked the door
open even as his long bronzed arm seized her forearm in a sudden
grip of rage. A waterfall of white—caftans, sheets and frothy
undergarments—spilled onto the ugly brown linoleum. The blue
plastic basket thudded down on top.